This Week on Broadway – Glenda Jackson as Lear / 07.02.18

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Tony winner Janet McTeer stars as legendary leading lady Sarah Bernhardt as she tackles her make-or-break role in the lavish, late 19th century production of Hamlet, in a world premiere by Pulitzer finalist Theresa Rebeck.

A memory play that centers around a boutique art gallery in Greenwich Village, the elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease who runs it, her family who struggles to care for her, and a building owner who aims to turn the gallery into a cafe.

Glenda Jackson to Play King Lear on Broadway

Oscar winner Glenda Jackson, who won a 2018 Tony Award for her performance in Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, will return to Broadway in 2019 in the title role of a new production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Performances will begin March 2019 at a Broadway theatre to be announced. Jackson left her acting career to spend 23 years as a member of the U.K. Parliament. In 2016, she returned to acting, playing the title role in Shakespeare’s King Lear at London’s Old Vic, for which she received an Olivier nomination, the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress, and a Critics Circle Award for Best Shakespearean Performance. The upcoming Broadway production will be a new staging, not the Old Vic mounting. More details here.

All-Female Glengarry Glen Ross Planned for Broadway

An all-female production of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross is being developed for Broadway, according to a report in People Magazine. The play, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts to sell undesirable real estate to unwitting prospective buyers. It is based on Mamet’s experience having previously worked in a similar office. The play opened on Broadway in March 1984 and was nominated for four Tony awards including Best Play, Best Director, and two Best Featured Actor nominations for Robert Prosky and Joe Mantegna, who won the production’s one Tony. Broadway revivals were produced in 2005 and 2012. A film adaptation was released in 1992 starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, and Alec Baldwin. More details here.

A Bronx Tale: The Musical has set a date for its final performance on Broadway; the musical by Chazz Palminteri, Alan Menken, and Glenn Slater will close August 5 at the Longacre Theatre. The Jerry Zaks and Robert De Niro-helmed production premiered at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse before officially opening on Broadway in December 2016. A national tour is scheduled to launch in Rochester, New York, in October before an official opening the following month in Los Angeles. Palminteri himself joined the cast in May, playing the role of Sonny at select performances and becoming the first actor to play the same role in a play, film, and stage musical. More details here.

Tony Winners To Receive Stars on Hollywood Walk of Fame

Tony-winning actresses Idina Menzel and Judith Light are among a group of stage-and-screen notables who will be newly inducted onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The stars will be honored at a Los Angeles induction ceremony at a date to be announced. Menzel can currently be seen Off Broadway in Skintight. Her Broadway credits include Rent, If/Then,Aida, and her Tony-winning Elphaba in Wicked. Menzel is most known in Hollywood circles for voicing the role of Elsa in the animated film Frozen. Light earned Tony Awards for her turns in The Assembled Parties and Other Desert Cities. She has also been seen on Broadway in A Doll’s House, Herzl, Lombardi and Thérèse Raquin. More details here.